SHOPTALK : Holiday Gifts That Speak Volumes : Books are a pleasure to select and easy on the wallet. Several stores in the area offer a wide selection at good prices.

Some of our favorite gifts received over the years have been books. It isn’t difficult to see why: They’re a great bargain, they last a lifetime, they afford pleasure over and over again, and they do all this without taking up a lot of space.

We have books on our coffee table to greet and amuse guests, and keep them occupied while we prepare drinks or dinner. Sometimes, when the house is quiet, we pretend to be the guests and we travel through the pages of our own coffee table books. This activity never fails to give us pleasure, as we remember the friends or family members who carefully selected these lovely books.

Holiday gift shopping is typically nightmarish. Fighting the crowds in the malls and in the stores is second in horror only to searching for a parking spot. Herein lies another wondrous feature of book shopping. Picture yourself in a quiet place. Classical music (or perhaps jazz) is playing. You are happily browsing through shelves and shelves of beautiful gifts. You are in a bookstore!

We perused several purveyors of books--a couple of the discount places, a fine independent store, and even a warehouse--for ideas and prices. We came home laden with gifts for our friends and ourselves.

The two discount bookstores had much to offer. Barnes & Noble and Crown Books both offer discounts and have large selections of books on sale. Crown’s discounts are a bit deeper though. New York Times Bestseller hardcover fiction and nonfiction is 40% off at Crown. The same books are 30% off at Barnes & Noble. New York Times bestseller paperbacks are 25% off at Crown and 20% off at Barnes & Noble.

Neither Crown nor Barnes & Noble offers gift wrapping. Barnes & Noble does, however, have a table where you can wrap your own purchases. The wrapping paper is complimentary (this can be a real lifesaver if you’ve stopped on route to a party to purchase a gift). The sale selection at both chain bookstores was similar. Take your pick of art books, cookbooks, books on sports or books on gardening.

No book-shopping experience beats going to a really great independent bookstore. Ventura Bookstore is just such a place. Gift wrapping, special orders and hard-to-find books are all included in the experience. UPS service is a terrific timesaver for shoppers sending gifts out of town.

And if you can’t remember a book title or an author’s name, you might as well skip the discount and chain bookstores. The staff at an independent shop such as Ventura Bookstore is so well read that they almost always knows exactly what you’re talking about.

While the regular stock is not discounted here, the sale selection has the other stores beat. We found anthologies of great writers such as Wallace Stegner, Edith Wharton and Agatha Christie. Also art books on Edward Hopper, David Hockney, Henri Matisse and Georgia O’Keefe. A lot of these art books are published by first-rate houses such as Knopf and Rizzoli. We picked up a copy of “Illustrated Catwatching” by Desmond Morris for a cat fanatic friend of ours--just $18.98 from the original $40 price.

There were quite a few autographed books scattered around the store, which make unbeatable gifts for collectors.

The last stop on our book tour was Price-Costco. This warehouse store is not a bookstore and offers no amenities. But they do have quite a few new titles at really low prices. (Approximately 40% to 50% off list). We saw William J. Bennett’s “Book of Virtues” for $16.99 from $30. “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” by John Paul II is $10.99 from $20. And “In the Kitchen With Rosie” (Oprah’s favorite recipes) by Rosie Daley, is $8.49 from $14.95.

When books are selected carefully, they give pleasure that lasts for years and years. And the pleasure of shopping for them is all yours.